The Dark Heart of the Galaxy, Part 1
The Needa, an Imperial trading cruiser, was docked at the spaceport and was at rest. The air currents were nearly calm, but the ship swayed with what gentle breeze there was. Vast open space, with its promise of fortune and glory, yawned above the ship and its crew. A soft line separated the starlit sky and the glowing haze of twilight as the sun set on Coruscant. The last rays of sunlight gleamed against the hulls of the barges and freighters drifting past, seeking out landing pads with which to unload their wares from countless worlds. Farther back still the sky seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the immense, planet-wide city.
The Trade Federation Director was our captain and host. We watched his back as he stood at the bow, surveying the city-and sky-before him. At least, the rest of the crew did. Though ostensibly a bureaucrat, there was nothing that looked half as much like a fixture in the fleet. He resembled a pilot, which to the crew is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in space, but was with the crew behind him.
Between us there was the bond of spacefaring. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation from our homes and families, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's stories - and even convictions. The Barrister, because of his many years and the respect he commanded, had the only cushioned chair on deck. The Accountant had brought out a portable holographic chess set, and was toying with the animated pieces. I sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the bulkhead. They said I had an ascetic aspect, and, with my arms dropped, the palms of my hands outwards, they often remarked that I resembled a meditating Jedi, despite the fact that none in my company had ever seen one.
The Director, satisfied the mooring was sturdy, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged some idle chatter, and afterwards there was silence on board the vessel. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of chess. We felt contemplative, and fit for nothing but placid staring out at the sky and ships before us. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very haze that hung over the planet-wide city was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the immense skyscrapers, and draping over the smaller buildings and shops in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low. From a glowing white it changed to a dull red, without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the coming darkness brooding over our small crowd of men.
Afterwards, a change came over the skies, and the silence became less brilliant but more profound. The old spaceport in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the people who lived in its shadow, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a passage leading to the very edges of the galaxy. We looked at the venerable facility not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "heeded the call of space travel" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the bustling metropolis. The ebb and flow of cargo and passenger ships runs in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of goods and people it had borne to the rest of a homeworld or to the battles in far-flung systems. It had known and served all the men of whom the Empire is proud - the great knights-errant of the fleet. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her holds bursting with treasure, to be visited by the Emperor himself and thus add to her already robust reputation, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests - and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had flown from Naboo, from Corellia, from Erith - the adventurers and the colonists; ships belonging to planetary heads of state and the ships purchased on credit; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of Outer Rim trade, and the commissioned "generals" of Trade Federation fleets. Hunters of beskar or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out into wide-open hyperspace, bearing blaster or saber, messengers of the realm's military might, carrying the torch of Imperial glory. What greatness had not floated through that ribbon of space into the mystery of an unknown system or quadrant! ... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the port, and the immense city burst into light. The beacon for wayward ships shone strongly. Lights emanating from the vessels moved in the fairway - a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," I said suddenly, almost surprising myself, "is one of the dark places in the galaxy."
I was the only one of us who still felt that I "heeded the call." At that point, I was a crewman, but I was a wanderer, too, while most crew members lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them - the ship; and so is their homeworld - the entire galaxy. One ship is very much like another, and the galaxy is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign worlds, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a crewman unless it is space itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree after landing suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole planet, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of crewmen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But I was not typical (my tendency to tell tales being the exception), and to me the meaning of a story was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
My remark did not seem at all surprising to everyone else. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently, I continued.
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Mandalorians first came here, nineteen hundred years ago - the other day... Light has shone from this world city since - you say the Jedi? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the Eternal City keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine - what do you call them? - trireme on the Hydian Way, ordered suddenly to Dantooine in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries - a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too - used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read.
"Imagine him here - on the very edge of the Empire, the space before him the color of smoke, in a ship shaped like a kloo horn - and going up laden with cargo, or orders, or what have you. Worlds of sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages...precious little to eat fit for civilized people, nothing but what resembles Dagobah swamp water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no leaving the ship after landing. Here and there a stormtrooper encampment lost in the wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay - cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death - death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like mynocks being picked off a ship here. Oh, yes - he did his job. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. About how he was 'man enough' to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by the prospect of a chance at promotion to the fleet at Dathomir, if he had good friends on Yaga Minor and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young fellow, coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-collector, or trader even, to mend his fortunes - perhaps too much Sabacc, you know. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination - you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the feeling of powerlessness, the surrender, the hate."
I paused. No one seemed to be listening, in any case.
"Mind,'" I began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, my legs folded before me, with the pose of a village wise man preaching, I suppose - "Mind you, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency - the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much to report about, really. They were not colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who get swallowed by darkness. The conquest of worlds, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or flatter faces or fur or more limbs than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. Most people prefer the idea only. The idea behind it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...''
I broke off. Light from the flames of engine exhaust glided across the sky, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other - then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless sky. We looked on, waiting patiently - there was nothing else to do until it was time to disembark; but it was only after a long silence, when I said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I once did a turn in the Imperial fleet for a bit." Their expressions told me they knew they were fated, before the ship took off again, to hear about one of my long and, ultimately, inconclusive experiences.
more to come...